The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Has New Tricks

By STEPHEN TOTILO

November 24, 2013

A boy named Link has a sword, a shield and pounds of perseverance. In his world, no problem is unsolvable.

Link’s world is the great Zelda series from Nintendo, a franchise 27 years old and some 16 major releases of astounding quality strong. He usually has a new trick he can pull to help him save that world. In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, new this month on the portable Nintendo 3DS, Link’s trick is that he can walk up to any smooth, vertical surface and flatten himself into it, becoming a sketch version of himself. He can essentially become a painting that walks across walls.

Believe it or not, the ability to flatten oneself into a wall makes for a good video game. So does the ability to travel to a sort of photonegative version of reality, which Link can also do in his new adventure.

There are Super Mario imitators and Call of Duty clones, but there have been few Zelda copycats in the past three decades. It’s probably because Zelda games are such an odd mix of complex puzzles, colorful characters and soundtracks so good that Nintendo is able to run a concert series just for Zelda music. The only thing conventional about Zeldas is their likely unlikely hero: a pointy-eared child adorned in a green tunic and armed with a sword he pulled from a stone. Link is the kid destined to save a princess.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, a new game for the Nintendo 3DS, features a boy with special powers.

Nintendo

In a Link Between Worlds, he has two vast worlds to explore and save: the invaded, formerly cheerful Hyrule and the plagued, stormy Lorule. Both so-called overworlds are full of challenges. A bridge is out, and Link needs a grappling-hook-like item to cross it. A mother needs Link’s help to find her son. A man who loves bees would like you to catch some, and if you do, he has a surprise for you. A mountain climber needs milk. There’s a treasure chest out on a ledge. If you pay close enough attention, you’ll be able to figure out how to get to it.

As interesting as the overworlds are in Zelda games, their best sections are underground. Zeldas are full of dungeons — that is, wonderfully assembled collections of conundrum-filled rooms laid out with clockwork intricacy. In the new game, one dungeon requires the player to oscillate between illuminating darkened passageways and extinguishing light sources to reveal magical paths that glow in the dark. Another dungeon is based on the concept of having a rod that can turn patches of sand into columns of sand, an idea that might sound like trifling, but in the hands of a Zelda designer turns into an hour’s worth of mind-bending challenges. A Link Between Worlds somehow has some of the series’s most cleverly built dungeons yet.

The earliest Zelda games forced players to figure out Link’s world for themselves. More recent games led players around. This newest one reverts to the ways of the past, allowing players to choose their own paths. This returned liberty is welcome.

Zelda games are a kid’s fantasy, what with the quiet peasant boy saving the kingdom and the pretty princess. She’s the one named Zelda, by the way, after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. But these games are not just for kids. The idea of a world full of entirely solvable problems might be the fantasy of people of all ages. Playing through a Link Between Worlds is the practice of discovering hundreds of things wrong and making all of them right. It is an immensely satisfying quest.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, developed for the Nintendo 3DS, is rated E (Everyone) for fantasy violence.